When my father died in 2006, I inherited two properties he owned. Both were in a 5,000 person town (maybe it is 10,000 now) in northern Wyoming. One was a two bedroom single family that his stepmom’s mother had owned for decades before passing away. The other was a shoddily built duplex (who puts carpet in a kitchen?!?!?) with one bedroom each. The rents on them basically paid the property taxes and upkeep and they were a mess. The local realtor was also the only management company in town and they took 15% of gross rents to manage it (and I lived in Seattle so I had no other options). I held onto these things as long as probate forced me to and sold them as soon as I could via said realtors. Total gross on both properties in 2008? $35,000. I don’t recall what they brought in a month but the aggregate was probably about $1,200 gross before taxes and any upkeep. In the two years I had these boat anchors, the plumbing in one unit had to be entirely replaced (along with the carpeted (!) kitchen floor) and the other one had some other big issue. They were just a nightmare.
But you’re still a greedy landlord monster! You have to be! Or some people’s worldviews will shatter. You notice she did not hold up an alternative model, just criticism of this one.
Why is it that you think I think that all landlords have that? When I said nothing indicating that I do? Where is all this inserting-of-words-into-my mouth by landlords coming from anyway? My extrapolations were based on experiences that I’ve had, where places full of $20,000 homes for sale also had such homes available to rent for $150/month. And so I said, it’s hard for me to imagine a place where one can buy a place for 20,000 and rent it for 500/month without renting to people who have a lot of trouble coming up with the rent and other basic living expenses. A $500/month rent on homes that can be purchased for 20,000 may be the going, fair rate in many areas, and if so, fine, I’m not talking about those areas (though it would be nice to live in a society that helps more people who would like to avoid the sinkhole of renting forever by making it easier for more of them to purchase such places, or even just to rent them – see below for ways to move towards such a society).
On the other hand, back atcha, bruh – Why is it that you apparently think that there aren’t a lot of landlords out there who are indeed price gougers, and that there isn’t a long-term and worsening problem in an economy that drives more and more people into renting places that often eat up a higher and higher percentage of their incomes? Why don’t you seem to see the problem of how, as the post title puts it, “American rents [have reached] record levels of unaffordability,” worth addressing? Many rental markets clearly do not operate on the sort of “All markets are, of course, free-markets!” wet dream basis that you imply they all do. Even if you’re not a greedy, price-gouging landlord out to squeeze as much as you can out of the lower-rung denizens of Neoliberal Land, many others are. Why are you making this all about defending your practices, instead of addressing those problems, especially when, if you’re charging fair rent and maintaining your properties well, I wasn’t even talking about landlords like you?
Did you read any of the report that Cory’s post is about? I would think that as a landlord, it would be of particular interest to you. I don’t know why you’re expecting me to hold up “an alternative model” when, as far as I can tell, neither you nor anyone else asked me for one, but anyway, here, this section especially of the report is full of “alternative models” –
The average London house price is now £500,000 ($750,000). The breakdown of this society cannot come soon enough IMHO.
Why do you feel the need to invest in property? Many people here in the UK are investing in property as pension rights have been eroded - final salary schemes have been phased out and pension pots raided by corporations and governments. Locking money up in assets only ends up benefiting those at the top (however you define them - certainly not those who have to work for a living) and reduces liquidity and therefore scope for investment.
Why are pensions not an option in the US now?
Because we don’t get offered them. My grandfather, who worked for Boeing for 38 years, is the only member of my family who has ever had a pension. I, literally, have one friend who has a pension coming and that’s because he’s an employee of the university system of California, which is state operated. I’m an engineer in Silicon Valley. We don’t even have collective bargaining rights, let alone pensions.
Generally, in America, the only people getting pensions these days are government employees. Everyone else? You’re on your own and you need to plan for your later years with your money now.
Cheaper than the average San Francisco house!
If you think I’ve put words in your mouth, I apologize, I hate when people do that to me, but your posts are full of contradiction. No one could rent for $500 if there were similar $150 homes available. The only rental price fixing in the US is fixing prices low. The OP says “American rents reach record levels of unaffordability”. The explanation is simple, American home prices have done the same, and the cost gets passed on.
Your focus on the financial well being of $500 renters is not really relevant except to explain why they’re renters. How can a landlord be a price gouger in free market? We’re not talking about Broadband where the only 2 providers collude, there are many thousands of landlords everywhere, and if you can’t fill your apartment you lower the asking rent till you do. I do this all the time.
The “alternatives” in the OP aren’t relevant to the free market either. They’re subsidies, not a different economic model to the free market in housing. Plenty of landlords LOVE section 8, it allows them to get above market rents in poor neighborhoods. If that’s a win-win, great. But it’s very expensive.
You seem concerned about slumlords. As far as I can tell what creates slumlords is rent control. If you can’t get a market return on a property, you put as little into it as possible since rent control also creates tight markets where renters can’t vote with their feet if they have a crappy landlord. I’ve seen ads for properties in NYC that only a scumbag would buy because of the low rents, rent control creates a cage match between landlord and tenants. My tenants love me. If something’s broken, I go and fix it. If there’s something about the apartment they simply don’t like, they move to a similar rent apartment, since in a free market, they’re always there.
[quote=“wreckrobeight, post:113, topic:70640”]
Why do you feel the need to invest in property? Why are pensions not an option in the US now?
[/quote]The era of lifetime employment in one job has ended, and private sector pensions with it. Being self employed it was never an option for me. My wife has a 401k that she tithes but is nowhere near a significant amount. Investing in property was the only way available to my wife and I to achieve a secure retirement even though we both work. Luckily, I have the manual skills to maintain property.
Do you vote Republican? Or is it Libertarian?
Might want to check your assumptions there. This is one of those examples of passive-aggressively attacking someone because, you imply, anyone who is a landlord with sensible views isn’t progressive in any way. They’re a Republican or a Democrat, right?
For me, I’ve never voted for a Republican in my life. I hold my nose and vote Democrat just about every time. I still have a rental though and I still want it to more than break even.
and now I violated my own goal of not replying to you on this bullshit anymore. Sigh.
Why engage any further with someone who so dismissively and totally refuses engagement with what I had to say? As for checking assumptions, s/he might think about the GUESSES embedded in saying what I just did. A lot can be packed into a few words, don’tcha know.
Ah. Whatevs then bruh. Have a nice day.
Let me know when the Revolution comes and the property and factory owners are lined up against the wall.
yeah yeah yeah, still all about you, i get it, i get it
…and sophistry is alive and well.
Oh! Reminds me of a recent t-shirt sighting:
when you can’t deal with what they have to say, just attack how they say it
It isn’t about you, millie.
Less expensive?!
£500,000 is 16 times the average salary here. My parents bought their house on a mortgage raised on three times my father’s income and the majority of their generation are now retired on good pensions. There is not only a shift of wealth from bottom to top but also from the young to the old in the UK. Somehow I had imagined it would be the same in the US. Incomes for pensioners are rising while those for 20/30 somethings, who can neither afford houses or pensions, are falling.
Yes. I can’t imagine a house in SF that is not literally a one room studio going for less than $800,000 at this point. “Normal” houses are probably, easily, $1,000,000 oftentimes.
http://www.trulia.com/home_prices/California/San_Francisco-heat_map/
San Francisco is the most expensive housing market in the United States. Supply and demand. SF is a small city (physically) and no extensive new housing has been built in decades, while people move to the area, year after year, driving housing prices up.
My wife’s parents were schoolteachers. In their 40s, they bought a house in Berkeley and in a nice part. Last year, after my father-in-law had been dead a while, my mother-in-law decided to move into a retirement community. Her house sold for over a million dollars. Schoolteachers and working class folks don’t buy homes in San Francisco, Berkeley, or (really) Oakland anymore. The entire Bay Area is out of reach.
There was a good article awhile ago here about how all the outer areas where a lot of the employment actually is are quite happy to say yes to a new office/business park but get all NIMBY when someone wants to build housing so nobody has to commute form SF/Oakland/etc. and that drives all the new employees to where the already existing housing is.
San Francisco is the poster child for NIMBY. Hardly any new housing has been built since the early 80s (just like no more parking has really been added). This was a conscious decision decades ago. Any attempts to build housing now get caught up in years of wrangling and community meetings and, still, often never gets approved.
Living across the Bay, I don’t expect SF to get on top of this in my lifetime or even that of my daughter. They screwed themselves.
